


Pick Up and Start Over

by Face_of_Poe



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Newt Scamander, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jealous Grindelwald, Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Spoilers, Past Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Protective Theseus Scamander, slightly altered ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 22:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17353421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/Face_of_Poe
Summary: A mildly tweaked take on the ending ofCrimes of Grindelwaldin which Grindelwald's jealousy prefers to torment Newt instead of attempting to kill him.Grief-stricken and terrified for his little brother, Theseus sits quiet vigil by Newt's bedside at St. Mungo's when a not-altogether-unexpected visitor materializes in the locked-down ward.





	Pick Up and Start Over

**Author's Note:**

> Or: author is a jerk whose natural response to falling in love with a character is making them suffer _just_ a little extra.

They’ve already spoken with Travers, and with Minister Fawley. Mediwitches and wizards have come and gone in thirty-minute intervals since their arrival, with each new face as flummoxed as the last. Eventually, despair rising and desperate to avoid the audience, Theseus pushes Tina out the door with the not-altogether-unreasonable point that the muggle is in dire need of a bed, and a promise to owl the instant anything changes.

And then Theseus is alone in a locked-down ward with nothing left to distract him from his grief for his fiancée and his fear for his little brother where he lies in a fitful state on the infirmary bed. He takes a handkerchief and dabs at Newt’s sweat-sheened brow – is savvy enough by now not to let his hopes rise at the corresponding groan, the way Newt’s head thrashes to the other side and stills again – before resigning himself to this new, oppressive silence and collapsing in the same chair where he’s sat steady vigil these past six hours.

The tears come soon after. And soon after that, great, heaving sobs as he considers all that he has lost that night – Leta’s final _I love you_ – and all that might yet be torn from him far too early.

If he doesn’t wake up.

If the healers can’t figure out just why he _won’t_.

_Head Auror_ has never felt so feckless a title as here, now, in this helpless moment. For all the good that the years of arduous study, the dedication, the tests and trials and field work, the _war_ for Merlin’s sake, are doing him in the face of this new dark magic that has already torn out his heart and threatens to take his soul alongside.

His racking sobs are subsiding when he feels the air shift around him. A remarkable appearance, because by rights the wards should hold this sort of magic at bay; and not, considering the identity of the intruder.

Theseus sighs and wipes once at his eyes. Sniffles and speaks down to the floor when he mumbles, “Was wondering when you’d turn up.”

A moment of silence – uncharacteristic hesitation – and then a careful step and: “Is it true about Leta?”

Theseus can only nod. Once, the motion sharp, stilted. Eyes still fixed on his shoes.

“I’m so sorry.”

He offers no response to that. Has none to give. Accepting condolences for the loss, that fresh ache, yet a gaping chest wound that surely no magic nor time nor pressure will ever serve to heal –

There’s a finality to it he cannot yet bear.

So he says nothing. Watches with a strange mix of resignation and resentment as Dumbledore steps slowly into his peripheral view and makes his careful way to the bed. Long, elegant fingertips stretch out to press gently against his brother’s forehead, the sweat-matted hair plastered to his brow. Newt flinches and thrashes – reacts no better to the touch than he had the kerchief – but then Dumbledore lowers his hand and presses his palm against Newt’s cheek, and he settles. Breathing deeper, steadier; his torment somewhat eased, at least for the moment.

It’s more than the whole host of healers at St. Mungo’s had managed in the past six hours. Theseus is reminded abruptly, starkly, of the power, the _potential_ , wielded by this man before him.

An awesome, awful truth his younger self had hardly acknowledged. Had had no context; his professor, older and wiser, protected within the walls of Hogwarts from the legends that swirled outside, the whispers.

The man who could have been _anything_ , and chose instead to teach.

“Would you like to know something funny?” Theseus breaks into this new, more absolute quiet. “Well, when I say _funny_ …”

“Go ahead, Theseus.”

“I thought you did it for me.” Dumbledore withdraws his hand from Newt’s face and turns just far enough to shoot him an inscrutable look. “Taking Newt under your wing, getting him through his seventh-year examinations so he might have a future after the expulsion…” He wipes both hands across his face and sits up straight; forces himself to meet Dumbledore’s piercing gaze. “Our parents fondly recalled the help you gave me, making sure I’d achieve the marks to make auror, and I think they thought…”

He trails away and shifts his focus to his little brother’s flushed face. A strange, misfit of a man grown from a strange, misfit of a child. _Loved_ by their exacting parents, yes, but not often _understood_.

Theseus clears his throat and tries again. “I think they thought you’d help him work _past_ the eccentricities, in light of everything. And instead, he sat his tests and then dashed off, illegally, to wrangle dragons before the scores even came back.”

He scoffs, and averts his eyes. “They call me a _war hero_ , but no one ever sees fit to mention that I only violated Minister Evermonde’s decree after my reckless little brother did it first.”

“Better late than for the wrong reasons.”

_Or not at all_ , Theseus thinks. Uncharitably, perhaps – a school needs its teachers. But he thinks about Travers’s conviction that Newt is moving about on Dumbledore’s orders, fighting the battles he won’t, and the resentment wells up inside him anew with a fresh wave of tears right alongside.

“Theseus…”

He forcibly steadies himself and then meets Dumbledore’s gaze levelly when he asks in a carefully even tone, “What does Grindelwald understand about your relationship with my brother that _I_ don’t?” Dumbledore’s lips part on a silent question, or exclamation, but his only other response is a sharp furrowing of his brows. “ _Mister Scamander – do you think Dumbledore would mourn for you?_ ” Silence. “He wasn’t speaking to me.”

Dumbledore conjures a chair right there by Newt’s bed and sits heavily, facing Theseus’s steady stare. “You know we were boyhood friends; you were there with Travers.”

“ _Closer than brothers_ ,” Theseus echoes. Scarcely daring to contemplate the full implications. “He’s jealous.”

“He’s mad.”

“But he’s not wrong. Newt is special to you.”

“It became quickly apparent to me,” Dumbledore murmurs, “shortly upon his arrival at Hogwarts all those years ago, that Newt is special, period.” He sighs. “Theseus, I did not urge your brother to walk into Grindelwald’s lair, I urged him to find a hurt and hunted boy in the belief that he was one of very few individuals capable of achieving a genuine trust with him. Your brother’s moral convictions have always stood markedly apart from external pressure, from any sense of personal ambition – and that is _precisely_ the sort of person we all must look to, in the trials ahead.”

Except here, now, he cannot even be certain if his brother will survive to weather those trials by his side.

But that is too painful to contemplate, and so he shifts to a topic that is only marginally less so, voice laden with defeat. “He was taking the fall, wasn’t he?”

Dumbledore exhales heavily and shrugs, reluctant and helpless.

“Was it Leta?”

The ensuing stillness and silence are answer enough, and all Theseus can feel is numb.

“Will he wake?”

Dumbledore shifts and looks around to their unconscious companion. “There is a dark magic at work here. Until the healers can sort out the curse used…”

“Not the healers,” Theseus corrects slowly. “You. Grindelwald killed a dozen aurors, easy, but after Leta…” He chokes and ducks his head. “He taunted him. And tortured him. Said he wanted to send you a _message_.” Dumbledore doesn’t avert his eyes from where they’re newly fixed on Newt’s face. “Is this it, then? A slow, painful death just to make sure you’d arrive in time to watch him suffer?”

Dumbledore hums low in his throat, and rises even as the chair underneath him vanishes. Theseus joins him at the head of the bed and they peer intently down on the patient, slumbering calmly by all outward appearance. “Perhaps; or perhaps a macabre puzzle, to be solved on an unknown, fatal deadline.” Another moment of consideration – another careful touch to Newt’s forehead that causes him to shift and mumble but with none of the earlier harshness – and then Dumbledore is slowly withdrawing his wand from the inner breast pocket of his vest. “Or perhaps his meaning was more literal.”

A quick wave of the wand, and a stoppered vial materializes in the air above the bed. The cork slides out, and then Dumbledore touches the tip of the wand to Newt’s temple with infinite care. His eyes fall half-closed in concentration, and then he’s pulling the wand back slowly, twirling it, twining a gleaming silver thread around the polished wood until the memory strand is fully extracted.

He gathers up the vial with his free hand and taps the wand tip against the rim to send the memory spilling inside. Collects the cork and stops it again, and has it secreted away in one of his pockets before Theseus can quite form a proper objection in the matter.

A soft moan from the bed makes him forget the matter altogether. Theseus muscles Dumbledore aside so he can hover anxiously over Newt’s scrunched face as he comes to.

When he does regain full consciousness, it is with a startling abruptness. His eyes fly open, fever bright and unblinking in most unusual fashion for his ever-fidgeting brother, and he stares unseeing at Theseus for several long seconds before his gaze slides to Dumbledore with a spark of recognition, of realization.

Newt holds Dumbledore’s eyes longer than Theseus can ever recall him looking at _anyone_ directly, and then says one, simple, unmistakably clear word:

“Niffler.” Theseus glances at Dumbledore, the politely bemused frown that settles over his lips. “Niffler, where’s my niffler?”

“Oh, Merlin’s sake,” Theseus sighs. “Goldstein grabbed it, she probably – ”

A faint tinkling sound interrupts his frustration. Three pairs of eyes turn at once to see the creature on a shelf in the corner, caught-out and frozen with a crystal phial caught between its front paws, stare unblinkingly at Newt with a sort of ornery challenge before slowly shoving the pilfered loot into its overstuffed front pouch.

“Little pest.” Newt shifts up on his elbows. “C’mere, you.”

The niffler suffers the indignity of being scooped up by Dumbledore without too much fuss. Dumbledore hands it oh-so-carefully over to Newt, who promptly dangles the thing by its hind feet and begins shaking the stolen treasure from the pouch.

Theseus flicks his wand and sends the phial back to its shelf, shiny instruments to various spots about the room. There’s a bracelet he dares suspect came off one of the mediwitches and, much to his chagrin, his own pocket watch.

One last, almighty shake sends a final trinket spilling onto the sheets. A necklace, he thinks at first glance at the chain, the ornately wrought metal encapsulating what looks like a gem, a charm of some sort.

Newt snatches it up, but it’s a near thing. Dumbledore’s hand hovers awkwardly in the empty space, and Theseus looks quickly between his gobsmacked expression and Newt’s downturned eyes, focused on his tightly clenched fist.

The freed niffler burrows under the topmost blanket and away from the sudden tension.

The terse moment stretches on between them. Theseus keenly feels the weight of secrets threatening to burst, threatening seismic shocks along this strange relationship his awkward misfit of a brother has developed with the most powerful wizard in Britain and perhaps the world.

And he keenly feels just how much an outside observer he is, looking in on this charged moment.

Newt fidgets. Blinks quickly through furtive looks at him, at Dumbledore, and without the benefit of his usual fringe to help hide his eyes, what with his sweaty hair plastered flat to his forehead. And then he turns over his hand and opens his fist to reveal the item in his palm with a soft murmur.

“It’s a blood pact, isn’t it?” Dumbledore doesn’t move. “You swore not to fight each other.”

And all the pieces click slowly, impossibly into place even as Dumbledore takes the charm in trembling fingers. “How in the name of Merlin did you manage to get…?”

A faint smile touches his brother’s lips – bemused, wistful, a touch self-deprecating. “Grindelwald doesn’t seem to understand the nature of things he considers simple.” Another hesitant pause, and then he asks, “Can you destroy it?”

Dumbledore’s eyes never leave the intricate vial of mingled blood as he turns away murmuring, “Maybe… maybe…”

Theseus watches Newt watch Dumbledore go, complication flickering across his wearied visage.

He thinks about the memory tucked in the pockets of Dumbledore’s sharp suit. Wonders what horrors Grindelwald conjured to keep Newt trapped in the confines of his head.

But has no idea how to do this with his ever-distant and prickly little brother. “Are you…?”

Newt glances up at him once, one corner of his mouth pulling up in what might be an attempt at a reassuring smile that is somewhat belied by the steady twitch of his eye.

So Theseus forces a pained smile in return and turns away; lets the relief at Newt’s waking be enough for now. But then a hand darts out and catches his own and he whips back around in surprise, surprise that’s plainly echoed on Newt’s face in spite of himself – even as his grip relaxes, as he threads their fingers together.

The first time in Theseus’s recollection that Newt has initiated such intimacy.

“I’ve chosen my side,” Newt tells him, and it takes his all not to break down all over again.


End file.
